Five Innovations Call of Duty Gave the World

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Some of the greatest innovations that were introduced or streamlined by the Call of Duty series.

By Adam Rosenberg

The Call of Duty series has been around for quite awhile now, but it really exploded onto a larger stage with the release of Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Many of the first-person shooter genre's greatest innovations came out of that game or were at least beautifully refined by it. With the big Modern Warfare 3 vs. Battlefield 3 showdown bearing down on us, we thought it would be a good idea to explore some of the elements introduced by each series that even now continue to create ripples in the realm of FPS games.

Here we look at some of the greatest innovations that were introduced or streamlined by the Call of Duty series...

Dangling Carrots

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The principal factor responsible for Modern Warfare's explosive success was without a doubt the addition of a role-playing game-like framework in the online multiplayer mode.

Throughout a match you would see bright yellow experience point totals marking your successful kills and assists, with the numbers tallying up after each match to advance your level. Rising through the ranks in Modern Warfare leads to a variety of unlockables, which in turn feeds into the runaway success of another of the game's well-implemented innovations...

Tuning Your Army Of One

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Class-based play was nothing new for online shooters when Modern Warfare was released, but the RPG-like structure of the game's persistent online character progression allowed Infinity Ward to offer a wide range of firearms, field equipment, camouflage and perks -- another of the series' innovations -- as level-based unlocks. Even the ability to customize and name your own class is an unlock, opening up early on at level 4.

Once the feature becomes available, there's no longer any need to choose from the static set of pre-made soldier classes. Building the perfect fighter quickly becomes an obsessive habit as you constantly mix and match each time new content unlocks to find the right mixture of weapons, equipment and ability-boosting perks.

Bragging Rights

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The thing about building an RPG-like XP system around a series of unlockable items is that you eventually run out of new stuff to unlock and have to cap off the level progression. Infinity Ward came up with a brilliant method of keeping the hamster wheel spinning, in the form of Prestige Mode. Once Modern Warfare players maxed out their levels, they had the option of resetting their stats and unlocks back to zero.

The only reward for doing so was a special icon next to your name in place of the usual rank insignia. Players could earn a total of 10 Prestige levels in that first Modern Warfare game and, like the RPG leveling, it was very effective at creating a "just one more match" mentality.

Death From Above

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Killstreaks have always been a part of the Halo series, but Modern Warfare evolved that idea, pinning tangible rewards to killing opposing team members without going down yourself. There were three in CoD4: spy plane, airstrike and chopper gunner, rewarded at three, five and seven kills, respectively.

The idea has been expanded on significantly since then, with even more over-the-top rewards -- Modern Warfare 2 included a much-maligned tactical nuke! -- going to even larger killstreaks. Modern Warfare 3 will tweak the formula yet again with its Strike Packages. It all comes back to those original three boons, all of which served to make the moment-to-moment in-match play that much more exciting in the first Modern Warfare game.

The Social Network

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Perhaps the most unproven and recent of the innovations nailed by the Call of Duty series is the upcoming social network and stat-tracking service, Call of Duty Elite. Web-based stat tracking for online play-based games isn't new, but Elite, even in its current beta form, ratchets things up in a way that could frankly be a game-changer for the industry in years to come.

Sporting both free content and premium subscription-based content, fans will be able to track their stats across multiple games in the series, starting with last year's Black Ops. Other content includes video guides for weapons and equipment, elaborate heat maps that highlight kill and death locations from recent matches, interest-oriented "groups," enhanced clan features, service-wide competitions that offer tangible real-life prizes, premium video content from Hollywood talents and, perhaps most importantly, free and early access to all downloadable content for paying subscribers.

It's a massive undertaking, but if it takes off it could really revolutionize the way developers approach the multiplayer experiences in their games moving forward.